


pro familia (bellum)

by CalmBeforeAStorm



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Character Death, Established Relationship, Illnesses, LITERALLY, Lilith says 'to hell with it', M/M, Seizures, Temporary Character Death, lol don't kill me for this, pre-Season 3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 04:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17759591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalmBeforeAStorm/pseuds/CalmBeforeAStorm
Summary: 'Go ahead and kill me. But don't hurt Alec and Izzy''Tempting offer. If I didn't fear starting a war with your father I would happily oblige'Lilith, banished back to Edom and seething with resentment, has nothing left to lose.





	pro familia (bellum)

**Author's Note:**

> Needed to get this fic out quick before season 3 airs and we find out the canon reason for Magnus' seizures. I don't have a beta so apologies for any typos. 
> 
> Note* I tagged this story as both 'character death' and 'temporary character death'. If you're concerned about character death but still would like to read the fic, skip to the end notes, where I explain why.

When Magnus falls, Alec experiences the unpleasant sensation of his heart stopping and his stomach sinking at the same time. Thankfully his training kicks in while his mind is still trapped in a horrified stupor, racing around his desk towards the door where Magnus lies on the ground.

He reaches him and places a hand on his shoulder just as Magnus begins to jerk, and Alec wonders what’s wrong with him for a brief moment, before he realises he’s watching his boyfriend have a seizure. He freezes, terrified, and wracks his brain, trying to remember his first aid classes.

Nothing’s around them; Magnus collapsed at the doorway to Alec’s office. He’d called to pick him up for lunch, a ritual Alec was glad was continuing. It helped Magnus pretend everything was normal. The thought of Magnus waiting on the platform every day for the subway to take him across to Manhattan made his heart hurt with fondness and a deep, suffocating guilt. It was because of _him_ , that Magnus had given up his magic; that he couldn’t just portal over anymore.

He desperately wishes he had Magnus’ magic now.

After one, agonizing minute, Magnus’s convulsions slow, then stop altogether, and he gasps. Alec gently arranges him in the recovery position and sends a quick plea for help to Izzy on his phone, before clasping Magnus’ hand.

‘Hey. Magnus. You’re okay. You’re okay’

Magnus seems dazed, and exhausted. When he speaks, his voice comes thick from his mouth.

‘Alexander?’

‘I’m here. You’re alright, Magnus. Just relax’

‘What – what happened?’

‘You had a seizure’

Magnus blinks at him, uncomprehending, and Alec keeps squeezing his hand and muttering comforting, meaningless words until he hears the familiar sound of high-heeled shoes racing down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

 

They call Catarina, of course. She portals over as soon as she can, leaving Madzie with another warlock friend. She immediately rushes over to Magnus where he’s lying, stretched out, on Alec’s sofa. Magnus risks a sheepish smile at her. She doesn’t return it. Her eyes are unbearably sad, and once she gives Magnus a once-over and kneels beside him, gently touching his face, Alec and Izzy look away, feeling like they’re intruding on an extremely private moment. Magnus and Catarina have been friends for such an impossibly long time, and the two mortals in the room know they have no hope of ever understanding the depths of such a relationship.

Catarina gives him a thorough examination – both magical and mundane - but can find nothing apparently wrong with him. She curls up next to him on the sofa with a cup of tea, worry clear on her face. She keeps frowning, like there’s something she’s on the brink of saying or figuring out, but she can’t quite manage it.

Afterwards, when she’s portalled them all over to Brooklyn and Magnus has fallen into an exhausted sleep in his bed, she gives Alec some nursing advice – a quick refresher of his basic first aid training from five years ago, in case Magnus suffers another seizure – and informs them that she’ll head to the Spiral Labyrinth that evening to research cases of warlocks who, for one reason or another, lost their magic. It’s the only thing she can think of.

When she leaves, dropping Izzy back to the Institute on the way, Alec moves in a stupor to the bedroom, stripping off his trousers and shirt and crawling blindly onto the bed. He curls around Magnus, feeling his body rise and fall with gentle breaths. He closes his eyes and doesn’t sleep a wink.

 

* * *

 

Catarina sends him a text in a morning. No news. She tells him to keep a close eye on Magnus and let her know if he has another fit. Alec thanks her and rings the Institute as soon as he hangs up. There’s no way he’s going in to work when Magnus is vulnerable.

He bustles around the kitchen once Magnus is up, making tea and pancakes. Magnus smiles at him when he brings everything over to the sofa, eyes softly crinkling in a way Alec can’t resist – so he leans over and carefully kisses his eyelids.

‘Thank you, darling’, Magnus grins.

He settles down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and tries to put the nagging worry out of his mind.

* * *

 

Magnus is fine for the rest of the day, and Alec lets himself relax.

It makes the moment where it all goes wrong even more painful.

 

* * *

 

The phone rings. Catarina.

Alec picks up and she shouts down the phone to him.

‘It’s Lilith! It’s Lilith! I don’t know how but it’s her. I felt some traces of her poisonous magic around Magnus yesterday but I didn’t recognise it. Damn it. You need to get him somewhere safe, right now! Before she tries again!’

Alec ends the call and runs out to the living room, just in time to see Magnus crumple to the ground for the second time in as many days.

 

* * *

 

Catarina is there in a flash, dropping to her knees beside Alec and pushing him out of the way. Magnus is terribly still and pale on the floor. His seizure had lasted six, horrible minutes, only subsiding a moment before Catarina arrived. He has blood around his mouth. Alec falls back in a heap onto the floor, a dull horror creeping over him as he watches Catarina start the magical equivalent of CPR. There’s nothing he can do.

 

* * *

 

She stabilises him as best as she can. But Catarina’s eyes, when she turns to Alec, are full of disbelief and unspeakable despair. There’s not much more she can do for him. Lilith’s curse has taken hold of Magnus and will not let go.

He has hours left.

* * *

 

Catarina portals Izzy and Jace and Clary over, but Alec barely notices. He sits, mute and numb, by Magnus’ bed – _their bed_ – as his boyfriend slips further and further into unconsciousness. Just this morning they were eating pancakes and laughing. And now Alec is facing an imminent, awful future; one he’d never even contemplated before: a world where Magnus is the one who dies, and he is the one left behind. He won’t even get the chance to tell him goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Catarina assures him Magnus is in no pain. She and Alec stay with him throughout the evening as Izzy and the others linger outside. They speak to him. Catarina switches between languages; apparently without even realising; French, Malay, Italian, Spanish, Latin. Alec doesn’t mind. He wonders what stories she’s telling him; what memories she’s invoking. Magnus has told him some of his adventures with Catarina, but Alec’s sure he’s heard only a fraction of them.

Alec reminds him of the stupid game of pool they played on their first date and all the restaurants they went to together. He murmurs about operas in Vienna, about boat rides in Venice, about photobooths in Tokyo and bacon burgers in the East Village. About just staying in the loft, watching old black-and-white movies Magnus loved and trying to get Alec used to cocktails. What a short time they’d had together, but how _much fun_ it had been.

Towards the end, he has nothing else to say except ‘I love you’ over and over. Catarina does the same.

And, eventually, with his oldest friend on one side and his lover on the other, Magnus Bane slips away.

 

* * *

 

Catarina can’t move, struck dumb by the shock of Magnus’ death.

Alec can.

He needs to get away out of this damned room and the body of his beautiful, kind, loving boyfriend lying lifeless on the bed.

He stumbles out of the room, unable to meet Izzy, Jace or Clary’s sad, knowing gazes, and heads up the stairs to the roof. He staggers out into the fresh night air, gulping in as many breaths as he can.

Magnus is dead. Magnus is _dead. Magnus is dead. Magnus is…_

His heart is pounding in his chest, roaring in his ears, and he feels his Parabatai’s presence before he sees or hears him. Jace crouches down next to where he’s collapsed onto his knees and puts a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t have to say anything. He feels everything Alec is feeling right now, and when Alec turns to look desperately at him, he sees the same distraught tears on his face that he feels running down his own.

Izzy comes silently to stand behind him, completing the trio. She puts her hand on his other shoulder, a steadying, familiar touch. Clary comes too, her quiet sniffles loud in the despairing silence of grief.

* * *

 

They’re not out there half an hour before they feel _something; a_ n awful, creeping ice that crawls over down their necks and spines, making the hairs on their napes stand up. There’s a sudden, overpowering smell of ozone, and it takes Jace making desperate gestures at him before Alec realises that his ears have popped. All of theirs have.

The sky seems darker than it was mere moments before, and Alec instantly knows something in the world has ruptured.

As their hearing returns, they hear their phones being to ping. Alerts from the Institute. Edomai spotted downtown, in DC, in LA, in London and Paris and Moscow and Ho Chi Minh and Beijing. Warlocks reporting rare visions. Rifts to Edom opening and spilling over with demons.

Clary reads these messages out and Alec barely has time to frown before Catarina appears in the doorway to the rooftop. She’s pale, dried tears on her cheeks, but there is blood mixing with them, running from her eyes in terrifying tracks. Her eyes are bleeding. She’s had the vision too.

‘Asmodeus,’ she gasps, weakly gripping the doorframe. ‘He’s heard what Lilith’s done. She killed Magnus. So he’s declared war’.

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged this story as both 'character death' and 'temporary character death' to reflect my own personal idea of how this story continues. Several characters on this show have died and come back, after all. I don't think I'll be writing a sequel to this but just rest assured that, in my mind, Alec and Magnus eventually get their happy ending here. 
> 
> (Read: Alec busts his way into Edom while Asmodeus is distracted by intra-hell war, steals back his man from where his father managed to trap him, forces Asmodeus to give back Magnus' magic and life in exchange for Shadowhunter help defeating Lilith, and then our main couple live happily ever after as badass husbands)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
